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Life Cycle Costs Escalation for Electricity

asked 2017-06-27 09:26:53 -0600

This will likely end up as an issue on either OpenStudio or EnergyPlus github. I just don't know which, so I'm asking here.

When I setup LifeCycleCosts objects in OpenStudio, I noticed that the LifeCycleCost:UsePriceEscalation isn't taken into account for my electricity usage.

What OpenStudio Loads into my model is the LifeCycleCost:UsePriceEscalation from the E+ datasets. For eg:

LifeCycleCost:UsePriceEscalation,
  U.S. Avg  Residential-Electricity,      !- Name
  Electricity,                            !- Resource
  2011,                                   !- Escalation Start Year
  January,                                !- Escalation Start Month
  0.9894,                                 !- Year Escalation 1
  0.9950,                                 !- Year Escalation 2
  [...]

LifeCycleCost:UsePriceEscalation,
  U.S. Avg  Residential-Natural gas,      !- Name
  NaturalGas,                             !- Resource
  2011,                                   !- Escalation Start Year
  January,                                !- Escalation Start Month
  0.9733,                                 !- Year Escalation 1
  0.9666,                                 !- Year Escalation 2
  [...]

When I look at the eplusout.html, table "Present Value for Recurring, Nonrecurring and Energy Costs (Before Tax)", for NaturalGas, I see it's taking them into account as I can use the discount rate I entered and the values for the escalation rate for NaturalGas and recreate the (net) Present Value in the table.

For electricity, it's ignoring the escalation rates. I also see that it's reported as "ElectricityPurchased", might be part of the problem.

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Comments

Julien, can you send me your IDF file and I will try to diagnose it the issue. BTW, it is probably a EnergyPlus issue.

JasonGlazer's avatar JasonGlazer  ( 2017-07-07 14:58:23 -0600 )edit

Done, I sent it to you via email.

Julien Marrec's avatar Julien Marrec  ( 2017-07-10 03:52:38 -0600 )edit

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answered 2017-07-12 06:33:30 -0600

In order for the LifeCycleCost:UsePriceEscalation to work properly the Resource field must match the resource used in Output Meter Name of the UtilityCost:Tariff. For the file provided by Julien Marrec, the LifeCycleCost:UsePriceEscalation used a Resource of Electricity but the UtilityCost:Tariff used a Output Meter Name of ElectricityPurchased:Facility.

This points out a few problems to be resolved as part of EnergyPlus issue #6144 that a warning should be issued if they do not match and that the LCCusePriceEscalationDataSetXXXX.idf dataset files that come with EnergyPlus should reference ElectricityPurchased instead of just Electricity as the Resource.

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Asked: 2017-06-27 09:26:53 -0600

Seen: 180 times

Last updated: Jul 12 '17